Billy and Jimmy must fight the Black Warriors gang in ord...oh forget it. I think most of us probably know this game's premise.
This submission is a redo after a better strat for fighting Abobo was was pointed out. In re-working the original submission using that strat, I discovered a glitch that allows you to control the horizontal flight of Abobo's body after he gets hit. Specifically the control is available from the 13th frame to the 26th frame after the button press for hitting him. This glitch strat allowed me to position him in ideal locations for the next hit with minimal wait time between hits. Unfortunately this glitch doesn't work for other enemies. I then re-re-worked the run using the glitch strat to save even more time.
The following is from the original submission.
Port Info.
There are two licensed ports of Double Dragon on the C64; one published by Ocean and the other by Melbourne House. This run is the Ocean version. Both ports are generally considered mediocre to poor quality ports. From what I can find online, the Ocean ports seems to be the one with the slightly more positive reviews. These generally revolve around increased combat attack options. Unfortunately this port is one player only. From what I understand, the other has the 2-player co-op option. Perhaps I'll look into a TAS of the Melbourne House port for comparison.
TAS Notes
BizHawk 1.13.0 with default settings.
Game is a cartridge version.
Aims for fastest completion.
Game can only be played with either SFX or Music...this run uses music.
Frustratingly, Billy can't access about 1/5 of either side of the screen resulting some waiting on enemies.
Reverse elbows seemed to be the fastest way to KO opponents. Thankfully this and all other moves are available from the start.
EVERYONE moves SLOOOOOOOWLY in this game.
The few times it appears that Billy speeds up his walking from area to area seems to be related to lag frames. I could not reproduce this at any other points in the game.
Sometimes knocking enemies off an edge takes longer than just beating them up because with how slow they walk, it takes forever for them to get in a position to be knocked off the edge.
The final boss has no weapon and is the same character model as any other foe (Abobo excluded), he just takes more knock downs to KO. Further movement after his demise is necessary to complete the level and trigger endgame scene.
ABOBO WEARS SUNGLASSES!!
Final Thought
This port definitely does not live up to the quality of other systems ports. It is what it is.
feos: It's a game with weird engine. I guess it's hard to make a smooth beat-'em-up game with nice mechanics on a system like C64. As a result, it's not obvious what action wastes time and what doesn't. So I went ahead and just tested myself the places where the run looks sloppy.
Last time my tests helped to find a cool glitch, this time what caused my suspicion was the place before the second boss. The player leaves two enemies (that take a lot of hits) on different sides, waiting for each of them every time, as they get knocked back after every hit. I thought about manipulating them to be on one side, and instead of waiting for both to close up, walking at them and hitting them at a higher frequency. The first test saves 98 frames. I consider it a major drawback for a game where most of the time you have no way to speed up the fights.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Thank, feos to encode this.
I like this!
Music is awesome & fighting moves are well optimized, in the last level i believe than you create a "Rhythm&fight" with elbow moves!
Yes, vote.
Permit me to suggest you, "renegade" on C64, it's for me the best port on all consoles of the ancient era, and it's the précursor who had popularize this game genre!
I have to vote No here because the gameplay showcased is extremely repetitive: punch, wait, punch, wait, punch, wait, punch, wait, punch, wait, punch, wait, jump kick, wait, punch, wait, etc.
Joined: 4/17/2010
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I PM'd Alyosha about the intended settings so hold on.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11473
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
You don't really have to repeat everything twice.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
For anyone who cares, this version of the game is PAL format. Switching to NTSC settings in BizHawk results in graphical glitches.
That's one less game to completely redo...at least until feos finds something else I can majorly improve in the run.
Joined: 4/17/2010
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Please tell how do you choose what attack type to use.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Please tell how do you choose what attack type to use.
From what I could figure out, the back-elbow was typically the fastest method when I first started playing the game. After finding it most useful across the first few battles of Mission 1, I essentially made it my default attack.
I couldn't easily find the ram values for enemy life to see if there was a faster way to decrease damage than the elbow. I couldn't even figure out if enemy deaths were based on total damage or number of knockdowns to determine when an enemy died.
On the assumption that enemy death was knockdown based (each enemy's costume color variation seemed to take the same number of hits), I tested and found the elbows seemed to be able to hit faster than headbutts or other 1-hit knockdown attacks. Especially when moving back and forth between two enemies while attacking both.
I only did this basic testing for attack options on the first few enemies to see which attacks knocked them down fastest. I'll freely admit that I didn't try every possible attack combination on every individual enemy...because that would have taken years!
Exceptions to using the back-elbow:
-When enemies would otherwise duck/jump to doge the elbow attack. In these situations, I used a different attack; usually jump kick because the enemy would often also dodge other ground based attacks.
-Landing an elbow during Abobo battles was much more difficult to get the timing and tended to take longer than using the headbutt attack instead. The glitch to control Abobo's flight helped too.
-In general jump kicks were only used as substitutions for elbow/headbutt. If I remember correctly without re-watching the whole video, there is an instance or two where jump kicks are also used to improve position for screen scrolling.
Joined: 4/17/2010
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Can you also describe vertical positioning? From my brief tests it's quite odd: you can freely adjust your height while closing in with enemies, but sometimes how much you walk diagonally affects how far you can walk horizontally. Did you notice that? Didn't check precisely, maybe it's just different lag.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Vertical position was usually adjusted to minimize the necessary vertical movement of enemies as they enter the screen (as you suggested a while back with the abobo fight). It was also adjusted if necessary to position Billy to knock enemies off a ledge.
There are a couple other instances where vertical position somehow affected screen scroll. Most notably at the end of Mission 2. Any closer to the bottom of the screen and it won't scroll correctly for Billy to climb down the ladder to mission 3.
feos wrote:
...but sometimes how much you walk diagonally affects how far you can walk horizontally. Did you notice that?
I'm not even sure what you mean with this. I didn't notice anything odd with diagonal movement. I may have just missed it.
If there's an example in the submission, give me a time/frame # and I'll try to see what you are referring to.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11473
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
I dunno, just like the old version of the Abobo fight, that scene looked too annoying, so I tried the first thing that came to my mind, and it appeared that you can get past the left enemy if you jump on him, which manipulates him to also jump when he gets up. And that leaves some room for you until he catches up.
Since you were already redoing the run, you should have actually reTASed it, as that's what boosts your skills and always reduces the overall time. The current TASVideos optimization standard is to submit when you can not improve your own run anymore even if you try. Or the improvements are really minor and aren't worth it until the next iteration. Improvements like this one, or with Abobo, stand out as obvious to try. I tried to improve other suspicious places too, and due to the subpar game engine, I couldn't.
You should be the first and the main person to judge your runs as you make them, and be hungry for anything that looks suboptimal. It's not a basic skill, but if enough effort is invested, it's always better than less effort :D
Are you planning to redo this run again?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
You should be the first and the main person to judge your runs as you make them, and be hungry for anything that looks suboptimal. It's not a basic skill, but if enough effort is invested, it's always better than less effort :D
Effort isn't the problem; experience is. I have no problem putting in the time. I'm just nowhere near as good at recognizing sub-optimal situations as you more experienced players.
Sure, it's a bit frustrating when you work hard on something and think you've made it the best it can be, only to have someone else point out something that can be improved.
But what is even more discouraging is the self-realization that a much more experienced eye can see improvement possibilities that to them are obvious, while I would never see or even contemplate trying it.
feos wrote:
Improvements like this one...stand out as obvious to try.
This is an example...I would never have considered trying that method. I understand that it's due to my inexperience. But while it may have been obvious to you, it wasn't to me.
feos wrote:
Are you planning to redo this run again?
I don't know. I'm not really excited about it at the moment, but that doesn't mean I won't look at it again in the future.
Joined: 4/17/2010
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To add to the hardship here, even if you decide to simply post WIPs and only if no one improves them, submit them, since it's C64, you're gonna end up with no feedback until someone who actually checks comes and beats you.
I think this game is worth a tas, but I can't guarantee that I'll find time to check your other iterations on it until it's submitted.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
